24 November 2015
Newsdesk
Will Smith has broken his silence about turning down the chance to lead the cast of Quentin Tarantino's slave western Django Unchained, revealing he didn't want to star in a vengeance movie.
The star is so proud of his culture and how it's portrayed on film he turned down the role, and allowed Jamie Foxx to take over as black slave-turned-bounty hunter in Tarantino's bloody movie.
"I wanted to make the greatest love story that African-Americans had ever seen from American cinema," he explained to The Hollywood Reporter. "The only way I felt I could make that movie, was that it had to be a love story, not a vengeance story. Violence begets violence. I just couldn't connect to violence being the answer. Love had to be the answer."
Will spoke to The Hollywood Reporter alongside Samuel L. Jackson, who joined Jamie Foxx in Django Unchained. The 66-year-old has worked with Quentin on a number of occasions and defended the filmmaker's portrayal of black people.
"People say a lot of things about Quentin, that he’s racist," he said, "but every character that he’s ever written for me has been a very intelligent, very driven person."
Meanwhile, Smith also opened up about his experiences with racism in the roundtable chat.
Insisting that everyone is prejudiced, regardless of the colour of their skin, the 47-year-old, who has starred in blockbusters like Men in Black and Ali and classic 90s TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, still thinks people are biased towards him, even though he's a big success.
"Everybody's prejudiced," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "Everybody has their life experiences that make them prefer one thing over another. But the idea of racism - there's a connotation in racism of superiority, that you feel that your race generally, just based on your race, is superior."
But he's blessed in that people rarely make comments about his skin colour: "I have to say, I live with constant prejudice, but racism is actually rare."
